CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Five

The next day, after nine hours of much needed sleep, I coax myself from bed and take a shower. Then I stretch on the barre until my muscles scream in agony.

       The bedroom I now call my own belonged to my Mum. Dad insisted I have it because it was built for a ballerina. Her pictures line the top of the dresser. Staring at her is like looking at my older self. The same full lips and dimpled chin.  We also share the same long hair and golden-brown skin. I am forced to look away from the pictures.

       Dad is sitting in the sitting room with a newspaper in hand and the TV on mute. When I walk in, he lifts his head from the TV and scrutinises me from over the thick specs that are perched on the bridge of his nose. “Good morning, dear. How was your rest?”

     “It is weird how I never get the kind of quality sleep I get here while I am in school.” I take a seat beside him. My gaze flickers to the well-dressed reporter on the TV screen.

       “Ah, that is easy,” Dad says as he drops the newspaper on the stool beside him and raising a mug I did not notice before to his lips. I can tell that the content of the mug is scalding hot black coffee. Just the way he likes it. He takes a tiny sip that would probably kill thousands of cells on his tongue, then says, “the energy of that school is full of anxiety and jealousy as opposed to the good energy at home.”

      I cannot help but roll my eyes. “Stop listening to those horrible rumours about ballerinas, Dad!”

      “They are not rumours, dear.” Dad picks up the newspaper again. “I was married to a ballerina, remember? I know how ugly the world of ballet is. And I can see how stressed and tensed you are when I come to pick you up.”

      I nibble on my lips because I have nothing to say. It is true that ballet is hard and competitive but it is worth it. Nothing in this world comes easy on a platter, especially not ballet. Some ballerinas do get carried away and let envy fill their hearts, pushing them to do some unbelievable things. There have been rumours of shards of glass in ballet shoes and being locked in their rooms or the toilets. I make a silent promise to myself to not let the demon that makes the dancers do awful things possess me.

     Somehow, I am jealous of the amicable brotherhood the male dancers have. They do not fight, argue or squabble like the female dancers. Maybe it is because they are much less than us in number or they realise that ballet should not have so much control over them. But how do you control something that is basically your whole life?

     What if ballet was not your whole life? I shake my head as if I am shaking the thought away. But it is not the first time that I am getting such thoughts. The first time I had a similar thought was when I sprained my ankle during practise and was taken to the sick bay. The nurse regarded with pursed lips while she was attending to me. When she turned to get some bandages from the cabinet, she whispered under her breath ‘all this hassle for something that is not worthwhile.’ Her words made me flinch but they also made me think. A ballerina’s career is something very fragile; make one mistake and you are out!

     A girl was expelled for gaining so much weight that she grew breasts that needed the services of a bra. And another was expelled for being underweight. One ballerina had an accident that impaired the ability to be on pointe, she was resigned and had to find something else to do with her life.

     I wonder if my Mum would have had an early retirement from ballet or maybe an injury or incident would have ended her career. Maybe she would have reigned as a prima ballerina and go on to inspire future petite rats.

      As I ate dinner with Dad (cornflakes in a sea of sweetened milk), my mind wandered to the letter that Ms. Azizen gave me. I decided that I would show it to my Dad, maybe it would convince him to not give up hope on me.

       When I hand the letter over to him, he wastes no time in slipping it out of the envelope and flipping it open. As he read, his eyes become wider and his grin expands until it takes up majority of the space on his face. “You see?” he gushes with pure delight, “I know that you are a star!”

    “Dad, stop exaggerating!” I say even though I enjoy it when he is praising me. I wonder if he used to butter my Mum up with as much praises and compliments. No wonder they lasted so long. If she had no died, I am sure they would have had the perfect love: growing old together after raising three or four children.

      I suddenly feel the lonely pangs of being the only child. I wish I had siblings, maybe a sister and a brother. It would have been fun to have someone to bicker with besides my Dad. I wonder if my siblings would have been the carbon copy of my Mum, just like me or looked like my Dad. Maybe they would have been the perfect combo, resembling our parents in equal ratio.

     Most importantly, I wish that my Mum did not die. I wish she had not let cancer win.